Creating model from reference image

[jpb14]

Hi to all,

I'm very new to Maya and as such a basically have no skills on it. I would like to know if it is possible to create a 3d model from a reference image. The image has front, side, rear and top views.

[Fiackm]

Yes I am struggling with this as well in my course..tips and videos would be greatly apprecaited

[ShamanicHarmonics]

I am totally new to Maya too, just started using it, but this was one of the first things I had to learn.

Basically you have your 4 viewports, mine has Perspective, top, side, and front defaulted. hover your cursor over the top view and click space bar to select the view- each view port has it's own menu options separate from the main menus - click the camera icon all the way to the far left side in the viewport menus. Then go to View > Image Plane > Import Image and that should allow importing of JPEGS. (not sure on other formats, I couldn't load a PNG file, but I'm super newbie too). Import your top view (oh I think you may first need to create a project, and put your images in the sourceimages folder for this project (not sure if this is required or not...) Do the same for the other viewports, but once you import the image, DO NOT move around in space at all or you can change the scale. Just click spacebar to view other view ports, hover cursor over next view (side/front), space bar, repeat above steps.

You can also move the reference images "back in space" so when you create geometry your geometry is in front of the reference image so you can see it. Also working in wireframe view helps a lot - Press 4 on keyboard to go into wireframe.